70+ Tundra Features For Fantasy Worldbuilding36 min read

Glaciers. Hoarfrost. Auroras.Welcome back, Outlander, to the 7th entry in Mythic Ecology, my series on how learning real-world landscape features can enrich our fantasy worldbuilding and storytelling. In this post I return to my minimalist framework for Dungeon Masters, Game Masters, fiction writers, and similar worldbuilders to merge the realms of general myth and geomorphology. Last entry we looked at deserts. As I resume my journey sketching a framework for designing Yridia, my unique D&D 5e fantasy world, let’s learn some tundra terms, with a visual guide!

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PART 0: MYTHIC ECOLOGY FOR FANTASY WORLDBUILDING & STORYTELLING

On the topic of Tundra worldbuilding, I highly recommend Famous Hippo’s Guide to the Arctic For D&D 5e.

Let’s revisit my minimalist framework for my worldbuilding. The six archetype tags with which I will flag all the various real-world land features in my Mythic Ecology Series:

1. Settlements: habitable regions of either Work or Play, Familiar or Exotic, offering diverse narrative functions: a Day in the Life, Home Base, Personal Reasons, Gathering Supplies. Can subvert tropes with Ruins or Escape.2. Omens: sensational, temporal, or particularly pointed features that offer narrative functions of forshadowing, and good or evil portents. Can subvert tropes with a Wild Goose Chase.3. Overlooks: sites of magnitude and grandeur, living monuments which can function narratively for finding resolve, invoking spirits, or as a Call to Adventure. Can subvert tropes with Dread or Betrayal.4. Passageways: transitional journeylands, including magical portals, functioning narratively for initiation and return, thresholds and tests, shortcuts and setbacks.5. Abyss: a void or confined space presenting scarcity or temptation, desperation and danger. Can subvert tropes with a Timely Rescue or Secret Refuge.6. Battlegrounds: sites fit for epic, sprawling encounters and climax conflicts. Can subvert tropes with Alternative Solutions.

Feel free to submit your own ideas, or draw outside the lines. Alright, let’s see how tundra fits in.

PART 1: TUNDRA TYPES

Tundra collectively can cover many varying terrains: mountain ranges and peaks, ice sheets, island archipelagos, fjords, glassland plateaus, river valleys, forests, as well as areas with grasses, sedges, mosses, and lichens for vegetation. By the nature of the topic we’ll also look at features relevant to harsh winters and glacial action more broadly. But for the most part, tundra falls within three domains:

PART 2: SNOW PHASES

Neve / Snow Field– young, granular snow which has been partially melted, refrozen, and compacted, yet precedes ice. Associated with glacier formation. After a full season of ablation it becomes firn.[Omens, Passageways]

Firn – older and slightly denser snow than neve, left over from past seasons and recrystallized as snowflakes compress under snowpack. Intermediate between snow and glacial ice.[Omens, Passageways]

Permafrost Plateau – coalesced Palsas that form a continuous elevated flatland area, usually in a peat bog. Some parts may grow as others decay. Often surrounded by wetlands, and can have pools of water during summer.[Settlements, Overlooks, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Stone Run / Stone River – a rock landform characterized by stable boulders with no finer material between them, a mass-movement and stone sorting resulting from freeze-thaw erosion cycles after an Ice Age.[Omens, Abyss]

Strandflat – flattish erosion surfaces on coastal seabed, with mountainous terrain on one side and protected waters on another, with potential glacial origin (disputed).[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Thermokarst – a land surface with very irregular surfaces of marshy hollows and small hummocks formed as permafrost thaws. Related to palsas and lithalsas.[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Piedmont Glaciers – valley glaciers which have spilled out onto relatively flat plains, where they spread out into bulb-like lobes.[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Dirt Cone – a conical shaped deposit with a core of ice, snow, or firn covered by insulating depositional material, like dirt. May arise on snow patches, and begins forming in a crevasse or hollow.[Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Glaciokarst – a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks like limestone, with such underground drainage systems as sinkholes and caves, in this form displaying major glacial influences from cold periods long ago.[Overlooks, Passageways]

Ice Field –a large area of interconnected glaciers, usually mountainous. Larger than glaciers, but smaller than ice sheets.[Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Icefall – portion of a glacier with rapid flow and a chaotic crevassed surface, functioning like a high-speed waterfall of ice. Can smooth glaciers, and piles can form seracs.[Omens, Passageways, Abyss]

Snowdrift – a deposit of snow sculpted by wind into a mound during a snowstorm, resembling sand dunes. Surface crests and slopes toward the windward side of a large object, with a lower and flatter leeward side.[Omens, Abyss]

Snow Patch – snow and firn accumulation on the surface longer than other seasonal snow cover, which can create distinctive vegetation.[Omens, Passageways]

Nunatak / Glacial Island– exposed, often rocky element of a ridge, mountain, or peak not covered with ice or snow within an ice field or glacier. “Rognon” refers to a smaller one rounded by glacial action.[Omens, Overlooks]

Yukimarimo – balls of fine frost formed when hoarfrost on a snow surface breaks apart then electrostatic attraction, ice crystal fusion, and light wind allow the frost to condense and tumble like tumbleweeds.[Omens]

PART 9: TUNDRA PHENOMENA

Aurora / Polar Lights – a natural light display in the sky, mostly seen in high-latitude regions around the planetary poles.[Omens]

Avalanche / Snowslide – when a cohesive slab of snow on a weaker layer fractures and slides down a steep slope, accelerating rapidly into a massive impact.[Omens, Abyss]

Blizzard– a severe snowstorm with strong sustained winds and lasting for a prolonged period. Also includes “ground blizzard”, where wind picks up loose ground snow.[Abyss]

Blue Ice – when snow falls on a glacier, compresses, and becomes part of the glacier. Enlarging icy crystals squeeze out the air bubbles, causing a blue hue.[Omens]

FINAL THOUGHTS

I hope you enjoyed this seventh entry in my Mythic Ecology series! I look forward to continuing with it, I have some greater ambitions for developing this series into worldbuilding web tools. Give this a share if you liked it, and let me know in the comments if you have any feedback. I publish new posts on Tuesdays. In the meantime, I post original D&D memes and writing updates daily over on my site’sFacebook Page. Also, if you want to keep up-to-date on all my posts, check out my Newsletter Sign-Up to receive email notifications when I release new posts. A big thanks as always to my Patrons on Patreon, helping keep this project going: Anthony, Bewby, Chris, Eric & Jones, Geoff, Jason, Rudy, and Tom. Thanks for your support!

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